How to ACTUALLY Get America to Build Transit

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Summary of the video (hopefully this is pretty accurate): 1. Build more metros and electric regional rail. 2. Build more cost-effectively. 3. Build in city cores, then expand out. In general, LOCATION is IMPORTANT. 4. Effective transit planners, ideally those who use transit and are engineers 5. Treating transit like an essential service similar to roads, water, and sewers. 6. Increasing education on transit in universities and schools, especially regarding transit in places outside of North America.

It still boggles my mind that Seattle spent so much money building a train system that is 95% grade separated and then...has to run trams on it because of the 5% that isn't. Like, come on, just make the whole thing grade separated and turn it into a proper metro...

I truly believe that those heading transit agencies should use transit. I was in Austin when ProjectConnect was proposed, and Randy Clarke used the red line and busses. Now in DC, I love that Randy is a user of the DC Metro. Now if only we could get a dedicated funding stream...

One thing I notice so many transit projects end up failing at is planning a whole system from the get go. It's a lot easier to get buy in for one line when people can see what the whole system is supposed to look like and how that line fits in the whole system. Another advantage of cities doing this from the get go is that, on the rare occasion that Congress decides to spend our money on us, the city has already gone through the community input and planning process and can start further along and end up qualifying for more money

In Britain it's noticeable how all public transport projects outside London involve plenty of Park & Rides.

COVID was a big setback for transit in many US cities. Ridership is way down where remote work has become dominant. Downtowns have traditionally been emphasized, but now neighborhood-to-neighborhood transit is relatively more important. Public transit faces huge challenges.

Light Rail here in the NC Triangle area (Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh) was basically singlehandedly scuttled by Duke University; everything else was a go. I should be able to find at least one article about this.

As an American I support giving our transit system to the Swiss or Japanese.

In American cities with their long straight roads it should be much easier to build a subway than in Europe. You can usually build the whole subway line below one of those roads. Especially in Los Angeles. I also wonder why it is not embarrassing for Americans that even some "poor" countries have much better public transport. Americans are proud of their airports, but even those usually suck compared to the ones in other parts of the world. The US already reached a debt of $34 trillion. Imagine they would invest $1 trillion into public transport.

San Diego's transit planning/construction agency is proposing an elevated automated metro with 2 minute frequencies connecting Downtown with the airport. But Downtown NIMBYs and San Diego's transit operating agency are joined in an unholy alliance against the automated metro ("automated metro viaducts will ruin bayside views!") and pushing instead for a light rail branch to the airport with 15 minute frequencies. Unfortunately even many transit advocates support the light rail branch because "light rail is cooler than automated rubber-tyred metro."

Management being hired internally isn't inherentely a bad thing. In fact, the MTA has been pretty sucked dry by outside consultants who work on projects and leave, as opposed being kept internally as institutional knowledge. America is very insular, so management, along with basically every class of worker below them, are only comfortable with American practices.

Three points in this excellent video are valid world wide. At 2m 50s 'to save the planet we need better public transport'. At 5m 40s the emphasis on electrified regional rail. At 12m 45s the need for public transport to run 365-days-a-year. On the point of electrified regional rail we must watch PROVINCIAL France . The success of the new RER-style system around Geneva (running to towns situated in France) has set politicians thinking. On 19 December the French Parliament approved a new plan for 'Service Express Regional Metropolitain'. ('SERM'} There are already FIFTEEN projects for SERMS under consideration! (Edit = I must stress that the SERMS scheme is for provincial cities, NOT for Paris.)

If streetcars didn’t get axed in the mid-century they would just transition into rapid transit system on certain corridors and circumstances. As an example in Toronto’s Bloor and Yonge streetcars being the 2 main subways and a part of the Queen Street subway in the Ontario Line Plan. If it was private companies, would just end up the Japanese model if they owned land around stations or stops. It’d be interesting if we see any resurgence of streetcar suburbs, though more so like Light Metro TOD with Montreal, Honolulu and Vancouver.

I think electric regional rail and subways are indeed the most important parts that need to be built. They both excel in different areas and they work together really well. Subways excel at providing very high capacity in the most dense areas and serve as a very good solution for the first/last mile problem, at least for a lot of people. Electric regional rail in the meanwhile excels at moving high numbers of people mid to long distance between population centers. Connect them up with decent bike infrastructure and a decent bus network in suitable areas, and you have a very decent backbone to build a great transit network on. Also, yes, keep it running. In order to get people using transit, they need to be able to rely on transit.

The cost blow outs and delays never stop freeway interchanges from getting completed... its not really about the those things its just that when it comes to cars we always find a way to deliver because the American dream is sitting in car traffic.

I think, that "nice to have" is the core to many of these issues. It not only causes a very unstable funding, but also makes it far to easy to destroy political support. And it also leads to building it like with a checklist instead of optimizing it to get as many users as possible.

We need to increase focus on transportation and density in the cities themselves, rather than going 20 miles into the suburbs and having stops so far apart that they don't even serve the area.

Most American city governments don't have the in-house expertise and rely on consultants and contractors who rip them and us off. Metro D.C.'s Purple Light Rail line started at $1.6B's and now at $10B's and still not finished and a decade behind schedule. San Francisco's new 2-mile light rail subway, few riders and Billions in cost-could have paid off the mortgages of every homeowner in that city.

Neo Luddites are everywhere, some using left wing and green arguments and some using libertarian right wing arguments. Public transport is freeing and green.